Jill Forney of Indiana gets her hair styled by Erica Nunez at the Chevy Pickup Lounge where local makeup artists apply makeup and style hair during CMA Music Festival on Thursday, June 9, 2016.
Shelley Mays / The Tennessean

Country music fans line up outside the Music City Center as they wait to get into Fan Fair during the first day of the CMA Fest Thursday June 9, 2016, in Nashville, Tenn.
George Walker IV / The Tennessea

Jay Earnhardt of Resitol Hats makes his way up Broadway as he delivers a shipment of cowboy hats to a client during CMA Fest Thursday June 9, 2016, in Nashville, Tenn.
George Walker IV / The Tennessean

Renee Artiges, Katha Fata and Laura Marklin of New Jersey find a cool spot in the shade along Broadway as they enjoy CMA Fest Thursday June 9, 2016, in Nashville, Tenn.
George Walker IV / The Tennessean

Jean Launsby of Bradford, Tenn. has fun with a guitar as she visits Fan Fair exhibit hall in the Music City Center during CMA Fest Thursday June 9, 2016, in Nashville, Tenn.
George Walker IV / The Tennessean

Country music artist Sara Beth poses for a picture with fans in the Fan Fair exhibit hall in the Music City Center during CMA Fest Thursday June 9, 2016, in Nashville, Tenn.
George Walker IV / The Tennessean

Ava Soputka, 9, and Tate Spangenburd, 10, of Ohio do flips while waiting for music to begin at the CMA Music Festival at Ascend Amphitheater on Wednesday.(Photo: Shelley Mays / The Tennessean)Buy Photo

For more than a decade, the property sat dormant and collected weeds after a blazing fire in 2002 destroyed a thermal plant that had operated there.

But this week, the same once-neglected riverfront site — now the home of downtown Nashville’s Ascend Amphitheater — was where country music star Chris Young and Mayor Megan Barry took the stage to kick off this year’s CMA Music Festival.

The year-old Ascend Amphitheater added its latest chapter this week by becoming a staple of the CMA Music Festival for the first time. Next month, the 6,800-capacity outdoor venue will reach another milestone when the city plans to open its doors for Nashville’s massive downtown Fourth of July fireworks celebration.

The venue, which is owned by Metro government and operated by entertainment giant Live Nation, opened with a bang last year, selling out more than one-third of its shows and opening Nashville to a wide range of musical acts. Most say the benefits of the $52 million Metro-financed project have far outweighed its biggest downside — complaints about noise from nearby businesses and residents in downtown condos and in East Nashville. City officials are still wrestling with that one.

For the next four days, Ascend Amphitheater is the site of CMA’s AT&T Skyview Stage, which is one of the free stages set up for the CMA festival. Acts will include Ashley Monroe, Brazilbilly (a longtime act at the Broadway honky-tonk Robert’s Western World), The Oak Ridge Boys, Sara Evans, Shenandoah and Sister Hazel.

Butch Spyridon, president and CEO of the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp., said Ascend Amphitheater this year will open a “larger footprint” for CMA festival-goers downtown, as well as a new stage that is high quality and more visible for fans.

“I think they’re going to be blown away,” Spyridon said. “From a fan experience, I can’t imagine that (Ascend Amphitheater) doesn’t top the list of pleasant surprises and improvements to the festival itself. It has to.

“As a resident and somebody who markets the city and values the importance of the music brand, I haven’t talked to anybody that has attended who hasn’t had rave reviews,” he said. “Maybe the biggest complaint has been the size of the beer, which isn’t necessarily a complaint.”

Memorably, the 2002 thermal plant fire occurred as the rock band Cake played a concert at nearby Riverfront Park. Its demolition opened 11 acres of prime city-owned real estate, which at first seemed destined for baseball, not live music.

The Nashville Sounds, the city’s minor league baseball team, had reached a deal under former Mayor Bill Purcell to build a baseball stadium on the site. That agreement fell apart in 2007, however, and several years later then-Mayor Karl Dean used one of his final budgets as mayor for public funding to build an outdoor amphitheater on the property accompanied by a new park, which includes open green space, downtown's first dog park, a community garden, a playground area and a bike repair station.

The project, which was completed last summer, immediately became one of Dean’s signature projects.

“I’m very proud of the way that it looks and the way that it fits into the city,” Dean told The Tennessean. “Having an amphitheater at that visible point in the middle of the city is a great statement about Music City, and I think that the place has had tremendous appeal.”

In a written statement, CMA Chief Executive Officer Sarah Trahern said that CMA is “always looking at ways to grow the festival and enhance the experience for our fans.

“Adding this fantastic venue to our numerous free stages downtown is a great addition, and having Chris Young on hand to make it ‘official’ is icing on the cake.”

The venue opened in July with an acoustic concert by Eric Church. That was followed by a range of acts last year, including Chicago, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Janet Jackson, Hall and Oates, Widespread Panic and Smashing Pumpkins.

Ascend Amphitheater sold 144,138 tickets during its first season, which included sellouts of 12 of its 31 shows. Because Live Nation’s contract with Metro includes a $1 charitable donation for each ticket sold, the city received $144,138 to be split evenly between its new preservation foundation and the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.

During the 2016 season, the amphitheater has sold out three of nine shows — Alabama Shakes, Jimmy Buffett and Disturbed and Rob Zombie — and it is on pace to sell out between 16 and 18 of the year's 30 shows. It has averaged more than 5,000 fans per concert.

Collectively, Live Nation officials believe more than 200,000 tickets will be sold for Ascend Amphitheater this season. The figure is substantially higher because that will include so-called “civic shows,” such as the CMA festival events and Nashville Symphony concerts that didn’t take place last year.

Under its agreement with Metro, Live Nation can host 30 shows each season, but must also waive rent for up to 10 shows each year that are considered civic in nature. These include seven symphony events, as well as three events that are grandfathered in each year: the CMA Festival, Fourth of July and Nashville’s New Year’s Eve celebration.

But the trickiest area has been trying to control unwanted noise during sound checks before shows and during concerts on school nights. Upon opening last year, the venue started receiving noise complaints from residents in nearby downtown condos and as far away as the Rosebank neighborhood of East Nashville. The biggest culprits were rockers Marilyn Manson and Sublime.

The Metro parks board last year responded by adopting a set of new regulations: outlawing sound checks before 3 p.m., setting an 11 p.m. curfew for concerts (the deadline is midnight if the concert is delayed because of the artist or weather) and a decibel limit of 102 at the sound mixer and 98 at the farthest property line of the park for any five-minute consecutive period.

But issues have persisted into season two of shows, which began in April.

Councilman Brett Withers, who represents parts of East Nashville, said that the first shows this year produced similar complaints as last year. However, he said decibel checks conducted by parks officials discovered that the concerts were within the noise levels authorized by the new regulations.

“It’s just that the sound continues to carry further into the neighborhoods under certain circumstances,” Withers said. “So, I wouldn’t say that it’s been resolved.”

Withers said he and others will continue monitoring the sound levels and revisit the guidelines at the end of the year if needed.

Metro Parks Director Tommy Lynch said his department is monitoring the situation and that Live Nation has been a good partner in working to solve the issue.

“We’re monitoring it and they’re working with us,” Lynch said. “From our standpoint, it’s live and learn.”